


hurt less

by violetswrites



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Car rides, F/M, a lil sad w/a happy ending, and in this fic so is Dani, bc i'm physically incapable of not writing a happy ending, bc it's their ~thing~ and it's cute, listen Malcolm Bright is sad we know this, other characters are in this too but have small mentions so aren't tagged
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:08:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29909832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetswrites/pseuds/violetswrites
Summary: an evolution of how they drive home or, I spent way too much time listening to “Hurt Less” by Julien Baker this weekend and this emerged.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright/Dani Powell
Comments: 4
Kudos: 51





	hurt less

**Author's Note:**

> no clue what this is, all I can say is that this is apparently what happens when I start listening to too much Julien Baker. this stays canon until 2x07 then goes vaguely into the future so there's that disclaimer.
> 
> anyway, enjoy!

_ i never used to wear a seatbelt _

_ ‘cause i said i didn’t care  _

_ what happened _

_ and i didn’t see the point _

_ in trying to save myself _

_ from an accident _

_ ‘cause if somebody’s gonna help me _

_ what’s this fabric gonna help _

_ and when i’m pitched through the windshield _

_ i hope the last thing that i felt before the pavement _

_ was my body float _

_ i hope my soul goes too _

The first few times she drives him home he’s insanely out of it either from a cocktail of antihistamines and alcohol, or an explosion of drugs, or a strange post-hospital, jello rambling high so she buckles him in herself. In fact, it isn’t until she starts driving him to and from work after the Taylor wedding that she notices he doesn’t wear a seatbelt unless she reminds him. He explains it’s a habit left over from his time at the FBI, no seatbelt meant he could jump out of the car faster. When she points out how dangerous that is, his response breaks her; 

“It’s not like anyone would’ve cared if anything happened. I didn’t have any friends in the FBI, it didn’t matter if anything happened to me. I was the son of a monster. I was expendable.”

After that, she always checks that he’s buckled in before she starts driving him anywhere. She needs him to know that there are people who care, people who want him to be safe and okay, people who need him. Dani doesn’t know how to say it in words yet, but she hopes that when she rolls her eyes as she starts the car and says, “Bright, buckle the damn seatbelt,” he hears what she means. 

I care about you.

I need you to be safe.

I lo— 

Well, maybe not that yet.

\--

_ i shouldn’t have let you leave _

_ i should’ve called you twice _

_ but i didn’t  _

_ ‘cause it’s always something else _

As he watches her storm out of the conference room, he thinks about the moment he accidentally dropped his mother’s favorite vase on the floor and watched as it shattered on the marble, irreparable. He’d tried and tried to glue it back together before she noticed it was gone but the pieces were too tiny and the puzzle was too difficult and he was so afraid that she and dad would yell and ground him, but then, a week later his father was being led out of the house in cuffs and the vase seemed like such a small thing to be worried about.

This time though, there is no bigger thing to overshadow the vase. Everything is out in the open, Ainsley will almost certainly be sent to Bellevue and maybe, maybe if he’s lucky he’ll be let off with community service but there’s no way he’ll be able to come back to work. The Whitly’s are being dragged through the mud again and he’ll almost certainly be alone. Who would stand by them?

But Edrisa unsurprisingly comes back and in time and with copious apologies Gil and JT come back too but Dani… even when he’s allowed back at work she’s distant and closed off and he has no idea how to make it better. He knows he deserves it, but it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt like hell every time he sees her dart her eyes away from him, every time she leaves to get tea from their shop down the block from the precinct without him, every time she moves to the other side of whatever room they’re in so she can be as far away as possible from him. He sees this and makes the mistake of assuming she's indifferent about him until one day he hears her talking to Gil and JT in Gil’s office three weeks after he comes back.

“I’m so furious at him but I still care about him too and it drives me insane.” He sees her slump down on Gil’s couch. She looks exhausted, “Just… please make sure he’s safe, make sure he buckles his seatbelt. I don’t know how to be around him right now but I still—” he hears her sigh, “just make sure he stays safe not just for you, but for me too, until I’m ready to remind him myself.”

Suddenly, he’s not thinking about the shattered vase anymore. 

Suddenly, he’s thinking about the time he accidentally dropped a plate in the Arroyo’s kitchen when he was eleven. He hadn’t spoken in almost six months and one night, while he was trying to help clean up from dinner, he had tripped over some uneven tile and dropped one of Jackie’s nice plates. He had immediately burst into tears because surely, this was a harbinger of things to come. But then, Jackie knelt down next to him and wiped his tears away with a dish towel and pointed out that the plate was only cracked into three pieces. That it would be an easy fix. 

He speaks his first words, voice cracking from disuse, but still there, “Really? We can fix it?” Jackie and Gil's faces are alight with twin smiles. Gil gets the crazy glue, Jackie picks up the pieces and they both help Malcolm put the plate back together, laughing and talking the whole time.

It brings him back to the present and he thinks about Dani. 

She cares about him.

She needs him to be safe.

And he finds that he lov— 

Well, maybe not that yet.

\--

_ and i know it’s a bad time _

_ but there’s no one left for me to call _

_ and i was wondering if you would be my ride _

_ and damn it, we are gonna figure something out _

_ if it takes me all night to make it hurt less _

She hasn’t been sleeping well since that night he asked her to arrest him and Ainsley in connection with the murder of Nicholas Endicott. Honestly, it feels like some of Bright’s insomnia transferred to her and no matter what, she can’t help but see the haunted, pained look in his eyes when he told her about the bloody scene, about chopping up the body, about the way his sister gaslit him, convincing him that she had killed again as a test of loyalty whenever she closes her eyes.

It’s on one of these nights that she gets a call that she sees is from him and without hesitation, she picks it up. It isn’t like she was sleeping anyway. His voice is quiet and uncertain as he asks if she wouldn’t mind driving him home from his mother’s house because it’s late, and he doesn’t want to call a cab, and he needs to be with someone, he needs a friend. They still aren’t really on speaking terms but there’s something in his voice that makes her need to get there as quickly as possible and she makes a twenty-five minute drive into a fifteen minute one. She sees him pacing on the sidewalk outside of the house and when he sees her pulling up, something in him seems to lighten and something in her chest catches. 

She takes one look at him after he gets into the car and immediately declares that they’re going to be taking the scenic way back, reminding him to buckle up before they drive away from the Whitly manor. They meander around the city for almost two hours before she starts to make her way back to his apartment and after all that time in near silence, it comes as a shock when he speaks up and he apologizes for calling her this late but she knows it’s more than that. 

She can hear the apology in his voice for pushing her away, for lying to her, for asking her to be the one to arrest him and, when she forgives him, squeezing his hand before he gets out of the car, she hopes he hears it for what it is.

I  _ still _ care about you.

I  _ still _ need you to be safe.

She could almost see herself loving him.

But not yet.

\--

_ leave the car running _

_ i’m not ready to go _

_ it doesn’t matter where _

_ i just don’t wanna be alone _

_ and as long as you’re not tired yet _

_ of talking, it helps to make it hurt less _

After that first drive, she starts picking him up and driving him home from work again. The first few times he tries to initiate conversation it’s stilted and awkward as they take the time to relearn each other but, little by little it gets better. 

She no longer darts her eyes away from him, now he’s noticed them lingering. She invites him to the tea shop and they become regulars again, and they sit and speak about everything and nothing, but never about the current case, it becomes a place for them. Just them. When they’re in the conference room, she no longer shies away from him and into the corner of the room. They take up the space together, filling it with theories and banter and questions and answers and it’s comfortable again.

One late afternoon, after a particularly tough case, a case that required him to visit his Dr. Whitly once again, he finds he’s afraid to be home alone in his apartment so, as they’re walking out to her car, he catches Dani’s arm and asks if they can just drive for a little while and she readily agrees. He isn’t sure where she plans on taking him, but she starts the car, and smiles as she hears the click of his seatbelt, and they start driving towards the Bronx.

As they cross the Pelham Bay Bridge, she tells him to check the menus of local restaurants on City Island to see if feels like he’s able to eat anything. They pick up miso soup, veggie fried rice, and dumplings from a local Japanese restaurant and she parks on the west side of the island so they can pick at the food and watch the sunset. It isn’t much, but after the day they’ve had it’s beautiful and they’re together. They sit in her car alternating between subdued conversation and comfortable silences for a few hours and she tells him that this is where she and her mom used to go whenever the silence in her house where her dad should’ve been got too loud. 

They’re about twenty minutes away from his apartment in SoHo when he asks if they can do that again. When they get to the next red light she turns to look at him and says, “whenever you’d like,” a soft smile and a quiet joy gracing her features. He can’t help but sneak glances over at her for the rest of the drive because damn, she's beautiful like this; lights illuminating her from all across the city, humming to the indie song playing on the radio, and a light behind her eyes that makes them seem to sparkle. She drops him at his apartment with the promise of seeing him tomorrow and it isn’t until he’s halfway up the stairs that he realizes she hadn’t needed to remind him about his seatbelt. 

Not once, because, well…

He cares about her.

He knows she needs him to be safe.

And he finds that he loves that about her.

He loves  _ her _ .

\--

_ oh, leave the car running _

_ i’m not ready to go _

_ it doesn’t matter where _

_ i just don’t wanna be alone _

_ and as long as you’re not tired yet _

_ of talking, it helps to make it hurt less _

It’s on a Saturday morning in September on the fourteenth anniversary of her father’s death when she calls him and asks if he wants to go on a drive and he answers yes almost immediately without needing to know why. When he gets into the car, he doesn’t ask her any questions, just tells her not to worry, he’s brought lunch and water if she’d like to stop and eat at any time and her heart is fit to burst.

They drive a little over an hour outside of the city to the Grounds for Sculpture where they wander around outside looking at the structures in silence as he waits patiently for her to open up to him. She stops on a bridge, surrounded by weeping willows when she finally tells him. Tells him about how she and her mother were just getting started with dinner when they heard the knock on their door, how when she went to answer it, she was met with her father’s partner telling her to get her mother, how she watched as her mother’s legs gave out and she realized she’d have to be the strong one for both of them.

He stands next to her and his hand covers hers, turning just enough so that he can cup her cheek and wipe away the tears that have begun to fall and she finds herself getting lost in pools of blue and before she knows what she’s doing she’s in his arms. Her head rests in the crook of his neck, her arms locked around the small of his back, and she feels more tears wetting his crisp button down but it doesn’t matter, he must have dozens more. One of his hands is cradling her head, while the other rubs small circles on her back and she’s not sure how long they stand there but she realizes that the longer she’s there, the more right it feels. As she pulls her head up and away from him, he brushes a few more stray tears away and tilts her head down to kiss her forehead before turning and offering his arm to her, suggesting they find a spot for lunch.

When they finally find a nice spot, he sets the bag he’s been carrying down and she sees that he’s brought an honest to god gingham picnic blanket for them to sit on and made her a sandwich and brought himself some twizzlers and has a thermos full of steaming Earl Grey, complete with two mugs for them to use. The gesture is so thoughtful and so  _ him _ that it almost makes her want to cry all over again. Instead, she tells him stories from her childhood when her parents would chase her around the grounds here while they played hide and seek. She tells him about how her dad bought her a kid’s forensics set for her eighth birthday and she spent the next few months getting fingerprinting dust all over the house much to the chagrin of her mother and watches as his eyes light up with laughter in a way that she very rarely sees.

After they’ve cleaned up and as they’re walking back to her car he stops her and asks if she’d like to do something like this again and she rolls her eyes in response before he stops short and grabs her hand, lacing their fingers together and staring intently down at them.

“No Dani, sorry, you’re misunderstanding me. I, ah… am asking if you want to do something like this again but as um… as a date.”

The blush he’s sporting is intense and adorable and she says yes, sealing her answer with a quick kiss before racing him back to the car. They laugh and tease each other the whole way back into the city, singing along to the radio loudly, enjoying the fading light of the early autumn day until they get back to his building.

She hears him unbuckle his seatbelt but that thought is quickly overshadowed by the dizzying kiss he pulls her in for before he gets out of the car to go inside. She smiles the whole way home and when she’s too happy to fall asleep, she calls him and they talk and talk until she falls asleep over the line, that smile still on her face.

She cares about him.

She needs him.

And she’s pretty sure she loves him.

Yeah, she loves him.

\--

_ this year i’ve started wearing safety belts _

_ when i’m driving _

_ because when i’m with you _

_ i don’t have to think about myself _

_ and it hurts less _

They’ve been together about eight months when he asks to drive her for the first time and she looks at him, shocked.

“All this time and you actually know how to drive!?”

He flashes her a cheeky grin, “What did you think I just… didn’t? No, I was just waiting for the right time and besides, I like spending time with you and for awhile I didn’t know how to ask so asking you to drive me home was the best I could do.”

She huffs, murmurs something that sounds like “kiss-ass,” and gets into the car, asking to know where they’re going and why he’s so fidgety, constantly drumming his fingers against the wheel and bouncing his left leg. He gives her noncommittal answers knowing that if he starts explaining, he will absolutely give the game away immediately. So he turns the radio onto the indie station she likes and thanks every deity out there that Dani seems to pick up on the fact that he’s trying to surprise her and even though she’s not a huge fan of surprises this one is  _ important _ .

He drives her out to the Grounds for Sculpture where he asked her out on their first date to ask her a different question, one that carries so much more weight, one that carries his hopes and dreams for the future with it.

Even though everyone told him time and again there was no way she’d say no, his heart still soars when she says yes.

They hold hands on the way back into the city and the sun glints off of the ring on her left hand and when they pull into the parking lot of the loft, they unbuckle their seatbelts and go inside, into the home they’ve made where their friends and family are waiting for him to introduce Dani as his fiancee. 

She never needs to remind him about buckling the damn seatbelt ever again.


End file.
